It was time to hit the gym. Never
mind that Shepherd was in the middle of his shift with
Henry--everyone in the department but the admin
assistant, who was, incidentally, the only woman, seemed
to have an unspoken understanding to go to the gym
together. Working out took precedence over working,
right?

Or maybe it was only unspoken to
Henry, who suspected they came to this and other
agreements without him because he wasn’t the right sort,
i.e. the sort of person who’d bring his overpriced
smoothie blender and old sports injuries to work. How
many green protein shakes does a person need in an
eight-hour period anyway? Is Shep constantly dehydrated?

Henry wasn’t as out of shape as he
looked in his boot-cut jeans, which Danawas always offering to replace with a slimmer,
darker pair.

“They don’t need to be as snug as
jeggings,” she said, “But you don’t need room to grow,
either. Right?”

Outsidethose jeans, well, Henry avoided
full-length mirrors. And when he shaved, he didn’t much
mind the sight of mounds of flesh pushing against the
front of his shirt.

He did promise Dana he’d start
working out, back when they first started dating six or
seven years ago (they didn’t quite agree on the number).
She hadn’t reminded him in a while now, he realised. She
hadn’t wrapped her arms around him in a long time,
either. She used to measure how easily she
could join her hands behind him and tell him the result,
her voice, as it travelled up through his chest,
sounding as if under water. Most of the time, Henry
couldn’t understand her at all.

The office managers slung their
gear over their shoulders and headed for the door, Greg,
the only other Asian guy in the department, looking cool
and condescending in a West Coast way, Bryan with his
smile that was all teeth. With a blender under one arm,
Shepherd dashed out of the storage room and joined them.
He turned to wink at Henry through the closing door.
Henry's face burned as he thought of the carefully
scheduled tasks he’d have to cover for Shep.

Mood rings could still be found in
dollar stores, and his job at the university had changed
little in six (or seven) years, but the girlfriend...

Six months ago, Henry was training
Bryan and Will. Bryan was the second newest clerk while
Henry was the most senior clerk in the office who wasn’t
yet Senior Clerk. Just as training ended, one of the
five managers failed to return from his extended
leave--there were casual mentions of HIV in the
office--and a position higher than senior clerk opened
up. Henry applied, of course, as did histhen-protégés Bryan and Will. They joked about
the internal interview, agreed to stay “the three
amigos” regardless of the outcome, decided whoever
became manager would treat the other two to a dinner of
shepherd’s pie in honour of Shep, then a temp, who had
been a janitor on the night crew and was not taken
seriously by anyone.

Anyone but Greg, apparently. As
soon as Bryan and his double-rowed smile moved into his
new office, Greg made Shep full clerk, like Henry.

These and other grievances Henry
poured out whenever he had time to see Dana, and the
exercise left him sagging, as if physically emptied of
complaints: how he had trained three clerks already and
found them slow and lazy, how the others toadied their
way into Greg’s favour, how Greg was keeping him down
because he didn’t want to promote another Asian, how
Shep was going to be more successful than he’d ever be.
There was one opening for a senior clerk left, but there
was no way he’d get it. His job was a dead end.

“So quit,” Dana said, her voice
slicing through the stifling air. They were sitting in
Henry’s car with the windows up because he grew chilly
easily. “You’ll find something else.”

“It’s not that easy,” he said. “Do
you know how many jobs I’ve applied for already?”

Dana did. She had listened to him
complain about each one from job posting to
post-interview disappointment.

"I read about this disgruntled
employee who hid fresh fish all around the office before
quitting,” she said, “in hard-to-find places, like in
the pots of the plants. The fish only started rotting
after she left, and no one could find the source of the
smell for weeks, even months."

Henry laughed for the first time
that day.

Encouraged, Dana continued, "When
you give your two weeks, I'll get you some fish, to
celebrate."

"No," said Henry, his face
darkening. “That’s for sure a felony.”

“Well, I’ll do it for you, then.”

“You can’t.”

Dana turned towards the window, her
lips pressed into a sharp line.

Henry wrote an email to Greg,
listing the demonstrations of Bryan and Will’s
ineptitude Greg had overlooked, the small changes Henry
had implemented to streamline operations, and apologies
for appearing disgruntled the past few weeks due to his
“sincere hopes to build a career with the university,
not just to have a job for a couple of years before
moving on, like Bryan, who as you know was going to
accept the offer from the school board...”

The reply came two days later:

Henry, Got your
email. Let’s talk on Monday. -Greg

Henry was going to be out of town
for workplace
safety training the entire week, as Greg knew. The talk
did not take place, and Will became senior clerk.

Dana had once showed Henry an
article about sex being, at least between monogamous
adults, the ultimate stress relief. Henry now wondered
if the researchers had forgotten about the stress
caused by everything leading up to the act. His skin was
flushed from the chest and above as he knelt on the bed,
knees apart. Next to but not touching him, Dana lay
propped up on one elbow. Between Henry’s thumb and
forefinger, a soft piece of flesh flopped up and down
like a goldfish out of its bowl.

Henry’s first pet had been a
goldfish. Five goldfish, actually--four died in quick
succession. His mother spent her days keeping the house
germ-free, and Henry didn’t want responsibilities, so he
never would’ve had a pet if a classmate hadn’t shown up
at his 11th birthday party with a plastic baggie full of
water and fish.

Henry named the survivor Junior.
Junior grew plump in a spare Tupperware container over
the summer. When Henry’s mother brought home a large
glass vase from a yard sale, Henry placed it on his
shelf and filled it to the brim, to give Junior a higher
ceiling.

The next morning, the vase was
empty. Henry suspected his mother of doing away with the
bacteria-ridden tenant, her offering the vase being a
trick of some sort, but she wasn’t home to confirm or
deny this and he was building a papier-mâché volcano
with friends from school, so it wasn’t until dinnertime
that he returned to his room and found Junior behind the
bookshelf. He stayed on his hands and knees for a long
time, not daring to touch the fish. Its warm odour
reminded him of the sea.

Dana was
looking not at the “fish” in Henry’s hand, but at her
own curves. Her brown hair hung in a screen around her.

“It’s like mermaid hair,” Henry had
said with uncharacteristic poetry after their second
night together, before pinching Dana’s smooth thigh.

Her skin was less smooth now; there
were dry, scaly patches on her shins, more lines around
her eyes and mouth. Henry wasn’t sure these changes
explained how, as a whole, she had transformed into a
stranger.

Henry felt his coworkers sneaking
looks at him the next day. Will and Shep guffawed over
his few half-hearted jokes and did not ask what was
wrong when he scowled.

They know.
Greg must’ve shown them his email. What infuriated Henry
most was their careful tread around him. Only the
janitors’ open stares were tolerable.

“Though they’ll probably all become
management before me at this rate,” he said to Dana over
dinner.

After dinner they streamed a movie
online. Fifteen minutes in, he grabbed her through her
dress. One thrust, two. His hips slowed. Henry sat back
on his heels. Dana watched wordlessly as the translucent
rubber between his thighs crinkled with the ebb.It looked like a grocery bag dredged out of a
pond.

“You want to give it another go?”

“Up to you,” she said, twisting her
neck away. He could only see the whites of her eyes.

The second attempt failed more
quickly. Henry got off the bed and went to the bathroom.

Maybe he should just quit sex.
Maybe he’ll quit his job and move to New Zealand.
But what would that accomplish? Henry couldn’t imagine
anyone regretting his departure. Even as a child he had
never yelled, “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone!” at his
parents or tried to run away from home. Not even for an
hour. He was good and hard-working. Wasn’t that enough
anymore?

Henry began brushing his teeth.
Through the door, he heard Dana stirring in bed, likely
having realised he wasn’t going to try again.

“Just leave, then,” she had said
again hours ago, “If you’re really the only one actually
working and overlooked. Why the hell not?”

Henry paused in the doorway,
glaring at Dana’s unmoving form on the bed. She lay with
her face in the pillow, not having bothered to push her
long hair out of the way. Didn’t she realise he’d lose
everything if he quit? Salary, stability, good
references and all. Greg would say that Henry left them
holding the bag, that he confirmed what they’d been
unwilling to suspect of him all along, which was,
ultimately, that he wasn’t a team player. And other sports metaphors like
that.

Under the thin polyester sheets,
Henry could feel Dana’s movements reverberating through
the mattress as she turned over.

If I just stay put, they’ll have to
promote me eventually. Shep can’t keep his head above
water for long... Henry shifted his legs away from the
coolness of hers and fell asleep.

Monica Wang
was born in Taichung, Taiwan and raised in Vancouver,
Canada. She received a BA in English and philosophy from
Simon Fraser University.